San Francisco doom band Acid King celebrates new album at Moe's Alley
SANTA CRUZ -- Celebrated San Francisco doom metal outfit Acid King plays its first Santa Cruz show in ages Saturday night, performing tunes from the band's latest effort Beyond Vision at Moe's Alley with local heavyweights Mammatus.
Formed in 1993 by lead singer and guitarist Lori Joseph, drummer Joey Osborne and bassist Peter Lucas (the first in a long string of rotating bassists), the power trio became one of the stalwart acts of the San Francisco metal scene. Recording an EP and its debut album for the Sympathy for the Record Industry label, the group eventually moved on to Frank Kozik's local Man's Ruin imprint later in the decade.
The band would refine its lumbering, hypnotic riff magic to new heights on the rumbling 1999 opus Busse Woods for Man's Ruin. Named after a forest area outside Chicago where delinquent kids would hang out, deal drugs and listen to music when Joseph was a teen, the album would later be reissued by Small Stone Records in 2004 with bonus tracks prior to the imprint releasing their follow-up III the next year. Acid King would go on hiatus for a time following that effort, but invitations to perform at European festivals prodded the band back into activity. With Scorched Earth Policy guitarist Mark Lamb joining the band on bass, the trio began playing regular local shows and gradually got together songs for a new album.
In 2015, Acid King issued what some called the band's crowning achievement with the trio's first new album in a decade, Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere on Svart Records. Adding psychedelic atmospheres to their signature monolithic riffs, songs like "Silent Pictures" and "Coming Down from Outer Space" take the listener on an interstellar journey unlike anything Acid King has produced in the past. The trio's line-up went through another transition in 2017 with the return of bassist Rafa Martinez (who also plays in acclaimed metal duo Black Cobra) and the addition of drummer Bil Bowman (a member of like-minded outfit Hornss).
The band would maintain its high level of crushing intensity live with a variety of festival appearances on both sides of the Atlantic including the Austin Terror Fest, the Up in Smoke Festival 2018 in Switzerland, the Treefort Music Festival in Boise, Idaho, the Northwest Hesh Fest in Portland, and an appearance at Levitation 2019 in Austin, TX. The group would also embark on one of its most extensive U.S. tours in ages that year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Busse Woods that was reissued by RidingEasy Records with new mastering and new cover artwork. Last year would also see the release of the band's first live album, a document of their set performed at the 2011 edition of the Roadburn Festival. This month, the label reissued Acid King's debut EP on 12-inch LP cut at 45 RPM for extra volume to mark its 30th anniversary.
What started out as a pandemic collaboration and one-off contribution to Blues Funeral Recordings project that was not originally intended to be the next Acid King album gradually evolved into the band's latest cosmic salvo of hefty riffs and heady atmospherics. Teaming with Black Cobra guitarist/vocalist Jason Landrian and bassist and keyboardist Bryce Shelton (Badr Vogu, Nik Turner's Hawkwind) and drummer Jason Willer (Charger, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine), what started out as experimental sessions would become the first ever quartet line-up of Acid King that tracked the band's most cinematic album yet entitled Beyond Vision.
Taking the listener on an interstellar sonic voyage that picks up where Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere left off, the conceptual effort introduces synthesizers to the band arsenal, melding the Joseph's crushing riffs with ambient drones inspired in part by science fiction and space travel (including the soundtracks to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Matt Morton's vintage synth music for the recent Apollo 11 documentary).
While latest trio formation with Joseph joined by Shelton and Willer as her rhythm section will be playing a string of European dates in Augustas well as a pair of September festival appearances in Sao Paolo, Brazil (for Setembro Negro) and Ripplefest Texas in Austin, a celebration of all things stoner rock organized by Bay Area record label Ripple Music, the the quartet line-up of the band played the new album in its entirety at the Great American Music Hall last month to an enthusiastic, sold-out house.
That line-up will reprise that performance for only three more gigs in Northern and Southern California, including this Santa Cruz show presented by folkYEAH at Moe's Alley. On Saturday, Acid King will be joined by heavy psych band Mammatus Founded going on two decades ago in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the group has evolved dramatically from its riff-rocking, robe-sporting early days playing house parties and dive bars.
The group's founders -- Emmert brothers Nicky (guitar) and Aaron (drums) -- had played together in earlier projects before teaming with bassist Chris Freels and second guitarist Mike Donofrio. It was the influence of Freels that led Mammatus to start adding elements of Bay Area experimental punk and doom acts like Neurosis and Sleep to their already lumbering Sabbath/Zeppelin riffage.
Quickly embraced as part of an established Santa Cruz neo-psych scene that included such notables as Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire and Residual Echoes, Mammatus recorded a demo that soon had the band signed to deals with San Francisco-based Holy Mountain Records and British imprint the Rocket Record Company.
The band's eponymous debut and follow-up effort The Coast Explodes both showed off a sludgy, bludgeoning approach to epic psychedelia that was augmented live by the band's wizard costumes, incense burning and an auxiliary staff-wielding member/mascot. The band toured the states with like-minded groups such as the aforementioned Residual Echoes and Japan's exploratory psych legends Acid Mothers Temple. But before long, Mammatus would go on an extended hiatus as band members settled into having jobs and families.
Finally returning as a trio with the departure of Donofrio, in 2013 Mammatus released Heady Mental through the Spiritual Pajamas label. The experimental album introduced new aspects to their sound, building songs around Emmert's extended finger-tapped arpeggios (think Eddie Van Halen guitar pyrotechnics meets minimalist composers Terry Riley and Phillip Glass) and adding Tangerine Dream style drone to the mix.
The band's new ambient/prog approach was hailed by critics and the band would be invited to perform at festivals like 2015's stoner/doom celebration Psycho California. Mammatus would issue its third record, Sparkling Waters, that year. Recorded with noted guitarist/producer Phil Manley (Golden, Trans Am, Life Coach, Terry Gross), the album continues the group's exploration of shimmering drones and extended progressive psych on its four 15-20 minute plus tracks, this time echoing Brian Eno's ambient work while still delivering plenty of head-nodding rock grooves.
While the group went through another period of inactivity, they eventually returned to the stage and the studio. In 2018, guitarist Emmert released Eminent Blade, a collection of languid solo guitar recordings that mirrored the ambient approach of the band's latter era. More recently, Mammatus issued a number of archival demos and other unreleased material from throughout its career leading up to their latest effort, the epic 69-minute double album Expanding Majesty. Put out last month on Silver Current Records, the artist-focused imprint run by renowned Bay Area musician Ethan Miller (Comets on Fire, Howlin Rain, Feral Ohms and psych supergroup Heron Oblivion), the expansive effort further refines the band's combination of blissed-out ambient synth drones and hypnotic guitar figures with crushing riffs on four 15+ minute tracks.
Acid King with Mammatus
Saturday, July 15, 8 p.m. $22-$25
Moe's Alley
